


the man who fell to earth

by jontinf



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Casual Ableism, Episode: s09e01 The Magician's Apprentice, Episode: s09e02 The Witch's Familiar, F/M, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Humor, Missing Scene, The Doctor's Meditation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 15:30:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5461679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jontinf/pseuds/jontinf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Is she your beloved? This Clara Oswald of Blackpool.”</p><p>He nearly slices off the tip of his thumb and throws a suspicious glance Bors’s way. “Are you ill, Bors?” he asks. “Have you come down with a case of the bloody flux?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the man who fell to earth

“You must send word to my wife. Tell her—tell her that I love her.”

“It’s only a splinter.”

“Tell her to sell the farm and move to a slightly smaller farm.”

“Bors.”

“Little Bors can help with the tilling.”

_“Bors.”_

“He is nigh three.”

The Doctor flicks the man on the nose, the only way to get his attention, and holds up a thin piece of wood that’s been removed from his little toe.

“Have you noticed something?”

“What?”

“You’re not dead.”

Bors inspects his own foot and then beams at the Doctor. “Magician!”

The Doctor cocks his brow. “What’s happening?”

“I pledge myself to your service.”

“No, you won’t.”

“You will feast with my family.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Come, magician, before nightfall.”

“ _No._ ”

“ _Yes, you must_.”

“I will not be told what to do. Understand?”

Bors doesn’t seem to understand, so the Doctor feels obliged to follow him over hill and dale in order to adamantly make the point that he won’t follow him. The farmer is more interested in casually making cheerful affirmations about pie and socks and advising to watch his step right there as it can get slippery.

This back and forth goes on until they arrive at their destination, a small farm with a surprising ratio of animals to children.

The Doctor gapes. “How many children do you have, Bors?”

“Eleven,” Bors shrugs. “One on the way.”

“Jumpin’ Jehosaphat, man. It’s not a competition.”

Bors’s progeny cheer loudly in welcome. This comes as a surprise to the Doctor as he thought that sort of thing only happened in films and Christmas adverts.

A girl about six with a Scout Finch haircut takes the initiative to run inside and tell her mother. When the latter arrives looking ready to give birth yesterday, the children form a line like the bloody  _Sound of Music_.

Bors places himself at the head and begins making introductions. “My wife, Ingrid. My first born, Bors. My daughter, Bors. My other daughter, Bors.”

After hearing that name eight more times, the Doctor wonders if he’s suffered an aneurysm, whether it’s finally happened after enough bad decisions.

“You’re all named Bors?”

“Keep it simple,” Ingrid replies. “That’s what I always say.”

Bors merely nods at his wife, pleased as punch.

 _Humans_.

 

 

 

He straightens his back against the shed and considers the farm life before him. They’ve just finished having lunch, and he is definitely  _not_  staying for dinner, thank you very much.

“Sonic… quill. Sonic scythe. Sonic cow.” He tilts the wheatgrass between his teeth and scoffs at himself. “Now you’re just saying what you see.”

A small wooden ball hits his shoe. One of Bors’s children, the Scout Finch one, runs up to retrieve it. Scout moves closer with a cautious tenacity, like approaching a fly with a swatter.

She grabs the ball and studies him. He guesses that she’s figured out that he’s not a magician but something else entirely, perhaps a creature conjured from songs. She looks him straight in the eye, devoid of the fear and helplessness of the boy on the battlefield.

He allows her to take off his sunglasses and experimentally set them on her own face. The Doctor frowns, to which Scout only grins and runs away.

“Hey!” He scrambles after her when it dawns on him.  _“Sonic glasses.”_

Clara Oswald would call this a surprise play. He’s decided to educate the masses before he leaves, fulfil a Promethean service for the simple folk of this time and widen their horizons on the cosmos in which they exist.

So he flings an animal pelt over his head and stands before Bors’s extended family. In the last act, he waves around a spoon and a hockey stick while Bors the Fifth, who also goes by the name Hansel, throws confetti in the air.

“And that’s the story of how I defeated Robin Hood,” the Doctor proclaims. “Yes, he totally cried.”

He sheepishly nods at the hoots of laughter and applause. Scout beams from where she sits cross-legged, still wearing his glasses. He’d let her keep them after all.

 

 

 

“I want to do something for Ingrid, something that’ll make her happy,” Bors tells him while mending a fence.

The Doctor busies himself with attempting to scrape all 13.3 trillion digits of Pi onto that very same fence. “What does that have anything to do with learning how to dance?”

“I believe it would make her smile.”

“Laugh, you mean,” he corrects. “At you.”

“Please, magician,” Bors says. “You boast of being a man of many talents.”

The Doctor sighs.  _Well, if his reputation is at stake_.

But he’s not going to enjoy it.

 

 

 

The two men stand face-to-face in a clearing, one of their hands clasped in the air, the Doctor’s other at Bors’s back, and Bor’s placed on the Doctor’s shoulder. The latter frowns at how much taller his partner is. He’s not used to that sort of thing.

Scout observes them happily next to a portable stereo that also operates as a state-of-the-art EMF meter. He’d gotten it in a fire sale on Navaros.

“Stand up straight,” the Doctor orders. “Slouch and you die.”

Someone once started a rumour that a Time Lord invented ballroom dancing in the court of Louis XIV. It had happened somewhere between a lecture on Newtonian dynamics and a practical joke. Louis was furious with him that day.

The Doctor continues to stare unhappily at the giant, an uncompromising drill sergeant meeting a new recruit.

“What is it, magician?”

“I’m pondering how much damage I’d inflict on the time-space continuum if I gave you an Altoid.”

 

 

 

Twelve Minutes Later

“No, no, no.” The Doctor’s feet halt in wet grass. “The music is all wrong. We need some classic rock. Chords as large as an elephant’s arse.” He points at Scout. “Change the station.”

She turns a dial and keeps on turning as he repeats, “Next, next, next, next, next— _stop_.”

The song he hears is “With A Girl Like You” by the Troggs. The summer of ’66. Vietnam protests. Porta-Colour television sets. The first episode of Star Trek.

The Doctor grins. “You’ll be the coolest kid in class, Bors.”

Bors smiles back hesitantly.

 

 

 

Another Twelve Minutes Later

“Your other left, Bors. Left,  _left_. How many lefts can a man have?”

“This  _is_  my left!”

The Doctor squints at his own leg and then mutters, “So it is.”

 

 

 

One Hour Later

“Know this, magician,” Bors sulks behind a tree, arms folded against his chest. “There is no such thing as a bad student. Only a bad teacher.”

On the tree’s other side, the Doctor replies, his hands open in a gesture seventy percent indignation and thirty percent pleading.  _“I said I was sorry.”_

 

 

 

Three Empty Threats, Seven Hurt Feelings, and Five Apologies Later

“Five, six, seven, eight…” the Doctors chants hopefully as they try to match the pace of the garage rock of the 1960s.

Bors is finally maintaining his balance, his clunky and plodding footwork a fair bit less clunky and plodding, despite his accidentally head-butting him a moment ago.

He won’t be entering any competitions  _but still_.

“I’m dancing!” Bors exclaims. He glances at his daughter, who’s fallen asleep next to the stereo, his cape draped over her body. The sun had set an hour ago.

They spot Bors the Second, alternatively called Wally, scrambling uphill to meet his father. Something about his run reminds the Doctor of an exasperated hamster.

“Father,” the boy gasps, his hands clutching his knees, “It’s mother.”

 

 

 

Scout crouches over the cradle and gazes curiously at her new baby brother. The Doctor enters the room just in time to witness her stick a pinkie in the infant’s nose. As one does.

He and Scout engage in a rally of dumbstruck panic when the baby screams bloody murder, like the child’s combusted into flames, and it’s beholden on one of them to at least put a hat on him and hope for the best.

“Fine.” He passive aggressively picks up the baby. “I’ll do what needs to be done,  _as always_.”

He speaks the language. It wasn’t actually a big— _bloody hell_ , where did he learn that turn of phrase?  Foul-mouthed little cretin. Did he come out of his mother with that mouth?

The Doctor holds the baby away from him like it might be contagious and begins to sing weakly, “ _The itsy bitsy spider_ —” Oh, what the hell was he doing? Right, right, right, right,  _right_. What would Clara do?

She wouldn’t have abandoned a child to die. That’s what she would have done.

The baby stops crying, his squidgy eyes growing concerned. At least, he thinks that’s concern. Could be indigestion.

 _"Dude, are you fucking okay?”_ the baby gurgles.

Criminy, even babies feel sorry for him, and that poor sweary sod just had a finger shoved up his nose.

The Doctor decides to level and offer him some guidance. Since he’s here.

“Fact of life: food is terrible in this time zone. No need to get your hopes up. Then again, you’ll be living off of your own mother’s bodily fluids. Not forever, obviously. That would be odd and disturbing.” He tosses a look of supreme pity and condescension at Scout. “You lot are  _disgusting_. Why do I keep coming back?”

Bors arrives on cue covered in dung. He must have heard the interminable wailing—and that was just the inner monologue of the Doctor, who immediately holds the baby tighter, reluctant to pass him on. A new human can take only so much excrement, be it his own or those of beasts of burden.

“What are you going to name him, Bors?” he asks, an attempt to distract.

“We decided to go with something different this time.” Bors grins coyly. “I think you might like it.”

Sanity, at last. The dawn of a new age. “Oh, Bors, you shouldn’t have.”

“Zantorian!”

He blinks. “Very good.”

 

 

 

He and Bors are whittling alongside a riverbank (not a euphemism), their trousers rolled up to their ankles. Bors is making a toy sparrow for Zantorian and the Doctor is trying for a sonic twig. It looks destined to become a very delicate cheese grater. At least this one will have a wood setting.

“Is she your beloved? This Clara Oswald of Blackpool.”

He nearly slices off the tip of his thumb and throws a suspicious glance Bors’s way. “Are you ill, Bors?” he asks. “Have you come down with a case of the bloody flux?”

“Ever since we met, magician, I have heard nothing but ‘Clara says this’ and ‘Clara thinks that’ and ‘Clara shan’t know about the fire and the second one after that.’ If she is not your beloved then who is she?”

That nasal voiced, beard having, hygiene deficient—first the marbles and now this.

The Doctor responds in the only way befitting of a distinguished man of the future. “Have you ever played Stratego?”

_“Magician.”_

 

 

 

They’ve all passed out on the floor after a night of revels with the other men of the village. Except for him and Bors’s cousin Albert. It should be noted that the children were asleep out of habit not drunkenness. Most of them at least.

Bors the Ninth, otherwise known as Donatello, sleeps to his left. The boy hogs the blanket and likes to begin mornings with his foot in the Doctor’s face. On his right is scraggly Cousin Albert with the chronic wind problems.

The Doctor’s forgotten how to fall asleep. He forgot a long time ago. You live long enough, and you eventually develop insomnia of epic proportions, the mind beset with every single worst and best day you’ve ever lived.

It doesn’t help that ale only makes him chattier and a touch sentimental.

“You know what I’ll miss the most?” the Doctor tells his bed mate. “Bad telly.”

Albert has no opinions about bad telly but nods anyway.

The Doctor goes on. “Pocket highlighters. Radio Four. Processed food. Empty car parks.” He grows very still, holds his breath, letting the crackling from the hearth become the only sound in the room. “English teachers.”

Albert has no opinions about English teachers either.

The pulse of the Doctor's hearts quicken over veering into territory that is muddled, dangerous, and a bit _too sentimental_. The last time he’d seen her they were attending the 1952 opening of Agatha Christie’s  _The Mousetrap_. She took him to dinner before the show and gave him a gold pocket watch that she’d found in a Sunday market. “To replace the one you lost,” she said. “Don’t make a fuss. It suits you.” She squeezed his wrist with a gloved hand, and he watched her in confusion. There was a joke there he wasn’t getting.

His mind drifts back to the present, this flea-infested shack in 1138 AD. What a glutton for punishment he was.

The Doctor adds to his list with a too obvious insistence, “The B Side of Hendrix’s 51st Anniversary.” He then sits up quickly like shaking off a bad dream. “Yeah, I’ll miss that.”

He runs his fingers through his messy curls and studies his surroundings. When was the last time he’d cut or combed his hair anyway? 1952 is the answer.

“Listen, Albert, I’m going to step outside. Get some air. And not the kind that you’re currently putting into the atmosphere.”

Albert sounds a toothless  _“ay”_  with an earnestness that makes the Doctor regret being short with him. The man watches him take pronounced and exasperated steps over the sleeping bodies of his family, burring “sorry, sorry” when he accidentally steps on somebody’s ear.

There’s a solitary cart near the goats. The Doctor brushes hay off its surface and then takes a seat. With one last defiant glance at the stars, he pulls out a magic marker and a piece of parchment from his coat and starts scratching the first line of a letter:  _To Whom It May Concern, Namely, Clara Oswald._

 

 

 

He wakes up the next morning lying spread eagle in the middle of the pen. A goat chews on his hair.

He sifts through a pile of index cards from his pocket and begins reading as if presenting a book report. “While I appreciate the interest,” he says. “I would prefer that we stayed friends.”

The goat doesn’t seem all too bothered and moves on to masticating on one of his peers, its tail thwacking the Doctor’s chin in the process.

He looks up to find Bors holding a pail of feed and observing him with great manly concern.

“Hello, Bors. I was just declining the amorous advances of your billy goat.”

“We shan’t be telling Clara about this either?”

“Probably for the best,” he answers before climbing out of the pen.

The Doctor later spritzes some perfume to quell the stench. The bottle belonged to the President’s wife, a parting gift after they’d briefly eloped in 1962.

 

 

 

He realizes he needs a change of scenery while building a Zen garden in the woods. The situation calls for a castle with moats and parapets and ramparts and a proper chapel. The more foreboding the better. He is about to contemplate the totality of two thousand years running through time and space. This isn’t a mere midday nap.

He goes to tell Bors and finds the farmer sharing a dance with his wife, slower and less precise than he’d been taught, her head settling sweetly against his heavy square chest.

The Doctor wonders what it would be like to touch someone as if they were as familiar to him as his own skin and limbs. He leans against the small doorway and softly smiles, a bit of an ache in his gut. Probably heartburn from the sheep’s genitals served for lunch.

“Magician?” Bors and Ingrid look at the Doctor expectantly.

The Doctor clears his throat and puts on an air of disinterest. “Oh, hello, Bors.”

“Anything the matter?” Ingrid asks.

“I’m afraid it’s time for me to go,” he says. “I’ve been putting off something. Something important.”

Bors claps a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “What is it?”

“I need to, er, meditate. Prepare myself.”

“If it is a battle you must wage, rest assured that I will be at your side.”

Ingrid makes a face. The Doctor doesn’t blame her.

“That won’t be necessary,” he replies.

“Then at least allow me to accompany you to your meditation. You saved my life.”

“Bors, it was only a—” Maybe it’d be good to have someone to make sure he doesn’t sneeze and accidentally form the supervillain origin story of Pol Pot. “If you’d like.”

“Oh,” the Doctor says just as he turns to leave. “Zantorian and I had a talk. He doesn’t like his name.”

“Oh?” Bors and Ingrid look at each other. “What does he like to be called?”

“Bors.”

“Yes, magician?”

“No, Bors. He would like to be called Bors. He feels left out. All of you,  _Bors_.” The Doctor grins a little too determinedly. “Get it?”

There's no reaction. He might as well have conducted a demonstration in playing croquet with flamingos.

“Right,” the Doctor says. “Time to die.”

 

 

 

Scout returns the glasses in the end. “You need them more than I do, oh great wanderer.”

She doesn’t actually say that, having apparently resolved to take a vow of silence whenever in his presence. He imagines her having the basso profondo of Barry White if he were ever to hear her voice.

Scout does elect to pinch his cheek after crookedly putting the glasses back on his face. She then climbs into her mother’s arms to wave goodbye as he and Bors start off on their journey to the nearest castle.

For the first hour, the Doctor talks nonstop about quantum foam. He feels that he ought to for fear of awkward silences. It may be hard to believe, but he’s rubbish at social mixing. How Clara puts up with him is a mystery that not even science can explain.

“Bors, you’re the beardy weirdy brother I never had,” he suddenly admits with an extremely contrary look of irritation, like he might actually hate the man.

Bors smiles at his feet, probably reminiscing about the fateful splinter that brought them together. “That’s very kind of you to say, magician.”

“You’re still an idiot.”

He carries on smiling, very un-idiotically, as if appreciating something that the Doctor cannot. “As are you.”

“Yes.” The Doctor nods thoughtfully. Seconds later, the penny drops. “What?”

 

 

 

_To Whom It May Concern, Namely, Clara Oswald,_

_If you are reading this, well, I suppose the inevitable has happened. Que sera, sera, cheese and crackers, and so forth._

_More to the point. There are some essential things you should know:_

  1. _The ginger hair dye that turned your sofa orange was my fault._
  2. _It’ll be up to you to inform the Mayor of Vardon of what happened to his narwhal Edith. I imagine that won’t help the case with our lifetime ban. That one’s your fault, you have to admit._
  3. _Lotto numbers 4363 5202 for Saturday 10_ _th_ _October._
  4. _You’re right. Adrian isn’t your type. His opinions on Shakespeare are too embarrassing._
  5. _85% sure that 302 is haunted. Persistent moaning and bed rattling. Proceed with caution._
  6. _I have never bloody liked ABBA. Won’t have you telling anyone that I did when I’m not around to defend myself._
  7. _It is best to store the least perishable items in the front of the fridge._
  8. _The Shirley Bassey Greatest Hits collection now belongs to you._
  9. _Try to avoid halibut from the year 2027 to 2030 but always, no matter what, avoid pears._
  10. _I found your bathtub in Milwaukee. It should arrive in the post within the year._
  11. _One of the last things I ever did was teach a farmer how to dance. Fancy that._
  12. _Clara Oswald. I’ll miss you the most._



 

 

 

Clara finishes reading the Doctor’s letter as Skaro implodes behind her. She quickly tucks it into her jacket when the TARDIS materialises. He’d flown off moments ago after going on about daleks and the concept of mercy, the letter falling on the ground as he left. He must have written it sometime before the farewell concert he threw himself. That melodramatic beanpole.

The Doctor frantically pops out and approaches her. “Can we forget that I stranded you on a planet infested with homicidal salt and pepper shakers?”

Clara fixes him with a moonstruck sort of gaze. The last twenty four hours washes over her. Roy Orbison. Nearly dying twice in one day. The twelfth thing on his list of essential things.

If they were sensible, they’d look into quieter hobbies (but they weren’t).

“Wish me luck, Doctor.” Clara balls her hands into fists and looks as though preparing to take a last minute penalty kick, win the match once and for all. She’s made a decision.

The Doctor hovers close, eyebrows knitting. “Why?”

“I’m about to do something incredibly—”

She jumps the gun and into his arms, legs wrapping around his waist, and fiercely kisses him as they collapse onto the ground with as little grace as possible. To her astonishment, he's kissing her back. She wasn't sure he'd ever want to—she certainly _hoped_. Skaro continues to swell and choke in the distance. She rather not admit that this is adding to her enthusiasm.

“Ow,” the Doctor groans, lying on his back. Clara makes a similar sound of discomfort on top of him, having endured her own share of injuries as of late.

She still laughs at the expression he’s making. He’s never looked more ridiculous. How is that possible? How is it possible that she’d still happily snog his brains out even so?

But he also appears relieved, like a weight’s been lifted (and added, her knee jabbing into his ribs).

“I should have thought that through,” she admits.

He grins faintly, utterly absent of objectivity. “You meant well.”

“You came back,” she says. “Always come back. Promise.”

His smile fades, and she sees it in his eyes. He’d been made to watch her die.

The Doctor puts forward a request and a challenge. “Do you?”

Her mouth lingers along his, and she gently pledges, “Yeah.”

They’re always making promises they can’t keep. Maybe this time is different; maybe they’ll surprise themselves.

He closes his eyes, slips his fingers into her hair, and leaves a quiet kiss on the edge of her lips. “Me too.”

She buries her face between his collarbones. He feels as familiar as the first house she lived in, like the end of the day, a place to recover.

“One more thing.” She looks up. “Why do you smell like farm animal and French perfume?”

He sounds punch drunk when he laughs. “I was looking for a bookshop.”

Clara smiles, entirely unsurprised by this lack of an explanation. She’ll have to fill in the blanks. It’s part of the fun.

Wasn't there a farmer? And he taught him how to dance?

 

 

 

Truth be told, in the end, as if there were any other reason, he was looking for a gift. For her.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Veradune and Rubberglue for reading the story beforehand and providing generous feedback.
> 
> Also, Bors definitely did not die in The Magician's Apprentice. He has twelve children. It would be too sad.


End file.
